


Brick and Mortar

by anticyclone



Series: Take A Chance On Me [3]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Heaven, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Tower of Babel, minor Crowley/Queen Semiramis, steadfastly ignored sexual tension, theological and historical inaccuracies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-11-28 18:04:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20970770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anticyclone/pseuds/anticyclone
Summary: Crawly let his wings vanish, so he matched Aziraphale. "What's the 'something'? The thing Earth has that Hell doesn't?"Aziraphale stared at him for a long minute. "You actually want to know," he said, and it wasn't a question.Called to witness the smiting of the Tower of Babel and then to visit Heaven (Michael thinks it'll do him good), Crawly eventually finds himself drawn back to the city he watched destroyed. The second time around it's ruled by a queen, flanked by the most impressive mortal gardens he's ever seen, and is also apparently Aziraphale's new base of operations.





	Brick and Mortar

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks again to thedeadparrot for looking this over. All mistakes remain my own.

**Babylon | 2903 BC**

"I don't understand why it has to come down," Crawly said. It was not a question. He had considered, very carefully, about how to state this without actually asking a question.

Babylon was a large city. It was full of people and life. And it was presided over by a grandson of Noah's, who Crawly had recently had the misfortune to meet. He'd learned that not all of the family thought the story of no-longer-baby Miriam possibly meeting an angel was cute. Nimrod, in fact, had very different opinions on angels.

Michael turned to him. "He threw Abraham into a furnace," she said.

Crawly ducked his head and folded his hands together behind his back. "Yes," he said, ending the word firmly even though being around Michael made him nervous. And when he was nervous he had a tendency to hiss. "The furnace is in his palace, though."

"The Tower will come down."

Crawly opened and shut his mouth and could not think of any more statements he could make that were clearly not questions.

The sky over Babylon was shading to black. The temperature was slowly dropping and short bursts of wind had tangled Crawly's long hair into knots. He kept having to knock it out of his eyes. It was nearly noon, which was when Michael would begin her work. He had met her here an hour ago to receive the news. His instructions were to stay here until she returned.

Divine manifestations of wrath required a witness. Couldn't smite a city without one. Crawly had the bad luck to be in Babylon already, so it was his turn.

He had liked Babylon. The city was built with a mix of stone and wood that was interesting, and there had been an actual effort made to get sources of fresh water pumped up from different wells throughout the city. The average inhabitant didn't seem to think much of it, but when Crawly had sidled over to figure out what Nimrod was up to, he'd gotten to speak to a lot of engineers.

Nimrod's project had needed a lot of people, and construction on mundane things like residences and streets and new water pumps had halted in the meantime. The engineers who'd brought the Tower from sketches to a brick-and-mortar reality had opinions about … everything. About the projects they'd been told to stop. About the one they'd been called to make together. About letting strangers with red hair walk to the top of unfinished staircases, although at least in that one their opinions had been overwhelmingly favorable.

Crawly had maybe pushed harder than necessary, to get a good look at the Tower as it was built. To get a good look at Babylon, from on high. He'd stood on the edge of the unfinished staircase a dozen times, each one higher than the last. Looked over the edge and seen people hauling wood and stone to make it even higher.

It was dizzying, to be perched on the edge of something unfinished. Even if you could fly. He'd stood there and watched engineers and workers move, increasingly distant specks. All intent on the same thing. All agreeing that the stairs weren't done. That they could be better.

Somehow it had not crossed his mind that Heaven would want to raze the whole thing to the ground.

"The palace will also come down, in time," Michael reflected. "I believe Sandalphon is taking care of that."

"Right," Crawly said. "Should I, er. Where will he be expecting me?"

The palace was not too close to the city, but it was within what could generously be termed Sandalphon's definition of a margin of error. Crawly did like Babylon but he also wanted to be outside of that margin before any of Sandalphon's work began.

"Sandalphon brings his own witnesses," Michael said. She looked at the sword in her hand, still sheathed, like she had opinions on that. She looked back up at the landscape. "You're mine."

It was hard to feel relieved.

In the distance the Tower stood. From here, on a low sandy hill outside of the city where Crawly had trudged out to meet the Archangel, it appeared as if the Tower was ringed with clouds.

Crawly had been on top of it. The day it'd been finished, actually. He'd wrangled an invite from some of the engineers. The clouds were a trick of perspective and a haze that hung over the city, a storm warning chasing people back indoors. The Tower didn't actually reach into the atmosphere like that. He had flown higher. And Nimrod, the mighty hunter turned builder, had no especial connection to the Almighty.

The Tower didn't _go_ anywhere. Well. Except up. He didn't get why it needed to be destroyed.

"I understand that you were present during some of the planning," Michael said.

Crawly's body, which had grown entirely too accustomed to Earth, began to sweat. Mostly it only happened when he was busy actually working but sometimes it also did it while he was anxious, and he didn't appreciate it. Part of him wanted to go in for a recalibration but he wasn't sure how much detail the service technicians in Earthly Corporations would demand.

"Yes," he said, carefully, with one _s._

"Your reports were… thorough." Michael traced a finger along the grip of her sword.

His spine wanted to twist in on itself.

"I don't know that we needed a complete reproduction of the Tower plans. The dimensions would have been enough." Michael gave him a sideways look and some of the tension unraveled into simple sourness. 

Oh. Yes, he had copied out the blueprints. He'd thought. He'd thought, well. That they were beautiful. Had pictured other angels, in Heaven, examining the drawings with as much devotion as he'd taken in copying them in the first place.

That was where he'd gone wrong, probably. Misplaced devotion.

He held still until Michael completed her thought. "But the transcriptions of things Nimrod said to you were interesting," she said.

Nodding seemed safe, so he nodded.

Being around Nimrod himself had made Crawly uneasy. It wasn't that he'd persuaded so many of the Babylonians to stop worshipping the Almighty. It had been over a thousand years since Eden and there were so many humans now. He had seen people not worshipping. It was low on the list of things that tended to cause trouble, in his experience (although not in his reports to Heaven).

Nimrod made Crawly uneasy because he had the fervor of a believer, but the only thing he believed in was himself.

_"If you don't believe in Heaven," Crawly had said, squinting at the drawings laid out on the table, "then why are you trying to reach it?"_

_"I don't believe that we need to follow Heaven, Cra'lee," Nimrod had corrected him. "If someone wants to dictate my life, I think I deserve the chance to speak to them personally."_

_"Of… course."_

_"Once we complete this, we will be on an equal footing," Nimrod explained. "We'll have a platform upon which to demand Heaven's attention and to receive it. The angels can't deny us answers when we're all on the same level."_

_"Right," Crawly said, thinking about how difficult it was just to get assignments out of Gabriel, who was supposed to be in charge of them._

_He traced a finger down a list of supplies that Nimrod had made. They were still waiting on deliveries. Crawly could really have left by now. But there was a shipment of stone coming in for the top level of the Tower. Would his report really be complete unless he stayed to see the final result of construction?_

_Several minutes later, Crawly had moved on to reading notes on windows. The pros and cons of various sizes, mathematics about light. The engineers were concerned about ascending to Heaven in opaque darkness, it seemed. Nimrod cleared his throat, and Crawly had raised his head, feeling slightly sluggish, still wrapped up in pictures etched into wax tablets._

_"The key is knowing the questions to ask," Nimrod said. His eyes were glassy._

_Crawly had kept his voice quiet, and small. A tiny thing in the grass, not worth pouncing on. "What are those?"_

_"You'll see."_

Now Crawly realized that was the moment he should have known it would all end in tears. But he'd been fixed on the construction. How meticulous the planning that had gone into the preparations. How thoughtfully Nimrod, who did give him the creeps but was good with bricks, had considered the tower proportions.

It was the most ambitious project Crawly had seen a group of humans come together to build, on their own, with no divine directive.

He'd thought to himself, They did it. They came back. After Eden, after the Flood. Humanity had come back from its Fall. They looked at what they had, wanted more, and even though the solution they'd come up with was absurd, they were _trying._

But Michael had not been sent to strike down Nimrod in his palace. She had been sent to destroy the Tower so thoroughly that its ruination would be the only thing people remembered about it.

Not that it'd been beautiful. Not that it had stretched the horizon to even greater distances, when someone stood at its peak.

"Did he tell you what he expected to talk to us about, if he did reach Heaven?"

Crawly shifted his weight. Sand slid under his shoes. "Only that he had questions he wanted angels to answer," he said, truthfully. He did not add that he'd avoided asking Nimrod about it again. He hadn't wanted to see that glassy-eyed stare a second time.

"Hmm." Michael looked up at the sky. The sun was nearly at its peak. 

She wore her long hair in a braid looped around her head like a halo. Her white robe was sleeveless and ended midway around her calves, and her sandals had straps that wound up to her knees. The sword looked like a normal sword, but also somehow looked like it was half Michael's size.

"We're meant to watch over this world, not to mix with it, Crawly," Michael told him. "Humans shouldn't be considering asking us questions."

Her eyes were on the Tower. Crawly still felt an instinct to make himself small. Turning into a snake would make himself bigger, and also be very awkward, so he held off the impulse.

When the sun did mark noon in the sky, Crawly felt it like the toll of a bell.

It rang inside his skull and reverberated off Michael's blade, which she unsheathed to hold above her head. The metal caught the sunlight, kept it, and burst into flame. The firelight made Michael's dark eyes and hair shine. She held the sword lightly and moved it like an extension of herself. It was an Archangel's sword and if someone had told him it _was_ an extension of the Archangel herself, Crawly would not have been surprised.

Deep inside, where normal thought continued uninterrupted, far away from awe, Crawly was glad that witnesses were not expected to wield weapons.

_"WATCH,"_ Michael commanded. She turned on her heel, incidentally facing him as her wings unfurled. She had to take off into the air and hover for them all to have space. Six wings, each as bright and as terrible as stars imploding. _"WITNESS, CRAWLY."_

"Yes," he managed to say. He could not blink. Witnesses were not permitted to look away, even while the outline of wings imprinted on their eyes.

_"HEAVEN EXPECTS A COMPLETE ACCOUNTING,"_ Michael said.

And then she took off, riding a storm wind down to the Tower. Judging from the gray streaks underneath the clouds over Babylon it had already begun to rain.

The heat from Michael's sword and the light from her wings left a ring of glass in the sand where she'd stood. As Crawly looked at it, it cracked.

He missed seeing the first strike of lightning hit the Tower, but he heard it.

***

Several nights later, Crawly sat by the gates of Babylon, his knees drawn up to his chest. He had his arms wrapped around his legs and his forehead resting on his knees. His mouth was dry. His back hurt.

And his ears buzzed.

There was a public fountain not a few minutes' walk from here. It was one of the few spots in the city that still functioned as intended. You didn't need to understand your neighbor's speech to stand in line with them for water.

It had taken Crawly some time to understand what had happened. At first, all the humans' speech had been as clear to him as before. He'd talked to a dozen people before he understood that when he asked "Are you okay?" the sound of it was not always the same.

And it had only been when he'd met a family now speaking two tongues, a man and his twin unable to communicate their horror to each other, that it really sank in.

"I'm sorry," he'd said, holding more hands than he could count, the sounds of the words shifting depending on whose hands he held.

The further out from the Tower he'd walked the less dramatic the lines had been. Anyone who had worked directly on it and lived at its feet suffered the worst. The man Crawly had known, with the twin, had been one of the brickmasons. By the time he reached the city gates the splits in tongue were more generalized. People still understood their families.

"Crawly."

It was all so much buzzing in Crawly's ears. He was tired.

He wished Michael had explained. He wished he'd thought of a way to ask, without asking, if the Tower's destruction would be the only consequence. He felt stupid, now, for worrying about a tower. He had liked it. But it had only been an inanimate thing. It didn't think. He'd watched one of the tower builders walk away from his family because they could no longer understand him, and the look on his face as he'd passed Crawly had been relief.

"Crawly?"

Reluctantly, he raised his head. Michael stood before him in her white robe, her halo braid. The evening air was hot and stagnant and her robe hung still around her legs. She did not have her sword.

"I'll… have my report in tomorrow," he said. His tongue felt clumsy in his mouth. He wasn't sure which language he was speaking, if any that a human would be able to understand.

She watched him for a moment. There were many other voices around, inside the gate, behind the walls. Unintelligible and disparate noises that only focused into words if Crawly narrowed his attention. Had the strike hit them, too? Had Michael understood him? He didn't know what he would do if Michael hadn't understood him. Try to use sign, like some of the families here? Walk away, like that one tower builder?

Finally Michael said, knocking aside that line of questions before they could go somewhere even worse than Crawly had already let them go, "Perhaps you should come back with me. Finish your account in Heaven."

"I'm assigned here," Crawly said. Perhaps too quickly.

"You're my witness." Michael extended her hand. "I think it would be good for you."

Crawly allowed himself to be pulled to his feet. All six of Michael's wings unfolded and curved around him. The ground here was grass and soil, not sand, so she didn't leave a ring of glass around them. But the blades of grass did char, at the ends. Crawly would have noticed if he hadn't had his eyes closed against Michael's light.

***

**Heaven | Time Gets a Little Lost Here**

The Principality Nithael squinted at Crawly. When he'd heard the rustle of wings coming toward him he'd been afraid it was Michael, coming to check on his progress. But Michael's wings shone with unfractured white light and Nithael had brilliant kingfisher wings, blue shading into gray on the back, and orange-brown feathers on the interior. Hard to mix up.

When she tilted her head at him, black curls moved against brown skin. Part of him had relaxed, because personal attention from a Principality wasn't what he wanted, but at least Nithael wouldn't be expecting his report.

"You look terrible," she said.

Crawly opened his mouth and found himself saying, a tinge bitterly, "Thanks."

Nithael looked taken aback. An extra gray eye opened on her jaw and blinked rapidly as if surprised to find itself there. It swiveled to look at Crawly. For a moment, he leaned hard into an echo of his snake form, so he wouldn't mirror the blinks back.

"I mean only… How long were you on Earth?" Nithael asked, fiddling with the sword at her hip. She'd sheathed it in gossamer, and Crawly was trying not to think about the spiders who'd donated web to cover a holy blade. He also wondered if he'd bothered to put his in a sheath if it would've turned the flames off. But it was a little late for that.

"Since Eden," he mumbled, ducking his head over his desk. He was three entire sentences into his report. His hand hurt from how hard he was holding the quill pen.

"Ah." Nithael folded her wings in. "You have been away too long, Crawly."

"Er. Yeah. Good to be back."

He did not have a private office - he wasn't nearly that important - but he might as well have. If Heaven had its full host, all the angels who'd left them with Lucifer, maybe there would have been a cozier, busier feeling to the place. But the desks of the other angels with Earth postings were so far away from his that Crawly would have to raise his voice to speak to them. If anyone was here, which they weren't.

Babylon had been loud. Even before the Tower fell. Babylon had been crowded. Crawly had been renting a room with three other people. And this wide, gray room, ringed with windows letting light in from the stars, was so empty that it felt strange to have someone else with him.

He dunked the quill pen into his ink pot even though it didn't need it. Pens in Heaven didn't run out of ink. He also hated writing with quills, it made his wings itch, but it was better than etching words into stone tablets.

"Is that your report on the Tower of Babel?" Nithael asked.

"...Babel?"

Nithael glanced down at the paper. An extra gray eye opened again, this time on her wrist, and it quickly scanned the scrap of writing Crawly had managed to produce. He laid the quill down and pressed his palm flat over his work. It felt like the tips of his ears were turning pink.

"That's what they're calling it." Nithael sat gracefully on a stool that had appeared on the other side of his desk and did not comment on what she'd read. "The humans."

Sagging in his chair, Crawly mentally added a fourth and fifth sentence to his report: _The Tower, never formally named, has been given the appellation the Tower of Babel. Derived from Babylon._ Maybe if he made sure to put in a sentence about how terrible Nimrod was, Michael wouldn't care if he could barely get to the end of the page.

"Was it really that tall?"

"It was tall," he said. He tapped a finger against the paper. "It wasn't that tall. It… It was just big. Nimrod couldn't have actually summoned us."

"Oh, that's not impossible," Nithael said, and did not appear to notice Crawly's head jerking up. "Anyway, I'm not on that continent, so I never saw it."

"Humans can summon us?" Crawly asked, seizing on it before the subject could wander back to Babylon.

Nithael shrugged. "If they have the right ritual. And your name."

The weight of _Cra'lee_ hung heavy in Crawly's ears. He swallowed.

"I had heard Babylon was alright, before Nimrod. Is that true? Only, you do look tired, Crawly."

"Babylon has a lot of people. Nimrod got there right after I did. You wouldn't think that many people could get along at once, but they did. Mostly. Even after Nimrod. They - They built things, you know. Not just the Tower. Useful things." He paused. "I think - I think a lot of them were planning on leaving, now."

He lifted his hand from his report and absently creased the corner of the paper, before he could think better of it. He wasn't sure why Nithael was still here, talking to him.

Being a guardian angel for a _person_ was nothing, a temporary assignment done in an eyeblink. Even Crawly ranked higher than that. But being a Principality meant you were the guardian to entire groups of people. It was why they'd been trusted with the Gates. The Principalities were also the only other angels who had been in the Garden, and they made Crawly nervous. In his head they were distant outlines watching him move in the Garden but never coming down into it.

It probably wasn't as bad as all that. They probably had never really noticed him. Eve and Adam, they'd been the important ones. Probably there was so little gossip in Heaven that Nithael just wanted to get the news before everybody else could.

"Only it's that I do remember you," Nithael said next, instantly quashing that hope. He ignored the impulse to coil up underneath his desk. "I know we didn't work together, exactly, but we sort of did. We have to look after each other."

"We do?"

Another eye opened to blink at him, this time on her cheekbone.

Crawly cleared his throat. "We do," he said, firmly. He touched the quill pen, left it, and dropped his palm back down on the paper. "I stop in with the other Earth agents, when I run into them." (Rare occasions, he did not add.)

"You could stay here," Nithael said, smiling at him.

"What?"

She reached out and gently laid a hand over his, the one he had spread out, covering his unfinished work. "Crawly. I was also in Eden. It's my task, too, watching over humanity. But you can do that from Heaven. You don't have to live on Earth. No one would think less of you for returning. You've put in over a thousand years of service. You could come home."

Crawly stared at her. "I - I'm supposed to give an accounting," he said, the words coming from nowhere, in an echo of Michael's cadence.

Michael hadn't actually said that Heaven only required a full recounting of the Tower, but she also hadn't said … otherwise.

Nithael sighed. She rose to her feet, her wingtips just brushing the ground. She bent forward and kissed his forehead. Her touch chimed through him and he missed a breath to the blessing.

"Consider it," she said, softly.

"I like Earth," he mumbled. "I like them."

And, horribly, he realized it was true. He liked them. He liked people who accidentally let unicorns go extinct, and babies with no instinct to self-preservation, and engineers, and men with great and terrible visions and maybe a list of angel names that he should be more worried about. Hopefully, Michael had burned that too.

He liked people who stood silently in line for water with neighbors they could no longer speak to. He liked crowded cities, full of people. He liked _noise._

Nithael tilted her head again, watching him. "Stay to rest, at least. The other Principalities are here, too. You should join us, when you're finished with your work."

When she left, she took the rustling of her kingfisher wings with her, and the office was silent.

At least until Crawly picked the quill back up.

***

**Babylon | 807 BC**

Cool water streamed around Crawly's fingers. From here it spilled into a long brick canal and was carried by a nearly imperceptible slope down the length of the wall and around the corner, to turn again twice more before coming back to this point.

Queen Semiramis smiled at him. "What do you think, Lady Amata?"

Raising his head, Crawly could not keep himself from smiling back. "I _love_ it."

Semiramis barked out a laugh and pressed her hand to her mouth, shaking her head. "Are you sure you aren't an engineer?" she teased. "You're the only visitor I've brought up here who's asked to see the irrigation systems."

"But to this scale!" He pushed himself to his feet. He'd sat down on the lip of the irrigation canal to get a better look at the mechanism bringing water up from the ground, so many hundreds of feet below.

Semiramis had brought him to the second-highest tier of the Gardens, a stack of squares that at four hundred feet tall were only half as high as Nimrod's Tower had been. For the past thousand years Crawly had been doing his best to avoid Babylon. It'd been the rumors of the Hanging Gardens that had drawn him in at last.

'Hanging' was a misnomer, or a mistranslation: the gardens only hung above the city in the sense that they were elevated above it. When he'd crested a distant hill beyond Babylon and seen them shining in the distance, the sight had stunned Crawly into stillness.

Now he knew that the shining outline around each tier was water, cleverly pumped up from the ground level by the biggest series of Archimedes screws he'd ever seen. The screws were expertly crafted and turned dually by a windmill at the base of the Gardens and by teams of laborers when the wind and water levels were low. Each screw was fifty feet long and shielded by a plane of wood to reduce evaporation. When turned, they pumped water up from wells at the base of the Gardens all the way to the eighth tier at the top.

"Amata, come," Semiramis commanded. The corner of her mouth was upturned or he might have missed the fondness in her voice. "I still have much yet to show you."

Crawly cast one more look at the screw and sighed, allowing himself to be led away.

"This level is for fruit cultivation. We are proud of our little grove, here," Semiramis said. She held her arm out and Crawly linked his through it. Behind them, four royal guards trailed, if men could be said to trail along while holding spears sharpened to wicked points.

"How much food does this supply?" Crawly asked.

Semiramis shook her head again. Her elaborately braided black hair sparkled where sunlight bounced off gold pins and jewels. "If you keep asking questions like that, my head cultivator will insist on keeping you."

For a brief moment Crawly thought, well, being kept wouldn't be so bad. Then he called a demure smile to his face and ducked his head. The edges of the fringed shawl he'd pinned and belted into place over a loose skirt shuddered. Semiramis just smiled at him.

The lowest level of the Gardens, open to the public who could find themselves the time to go, was a broad base of plants from edge to edge. Crawly had spent days wandering through it. A lush floor of grass, clover, and wildflowers had cushioned his steps. He held no illusions that the wildflowers were anything but conscientiously maintained. There had been some trees, too, providing clusters of shade here and there, and shallow water features that the braver children had splashed in.

Each tier shrank in size but by sheer scale could still be pleasure parks in their own right, or, in this case, an orchard in full production. The ground was green in various shades of grass. Berry bushes dotted here and there. And above their heads, trees stretched.

"They all look much older than six years," Crawly said. That was when the uppermost tier had completed construction. "Where did you get them from?"

"Some are specimens from within the kingdom. My head cultivator has an interest in apples. We've also taken pains to import branches. That tree there has two kinds of apricot. I'll ask them to serve it at dinner, you'll have to tell me which you prefer."

"You've been grafting!"

"Of course." Semiramis's fingers drifted over his arm and rested on the inside of his wrist. "I assume your family's orchards do the same?"

"It's important to preserve the lines you want to keep."

Turned out that even dressed in appropriately local clothing, with appropriately braided (if less bejeweled than the queen's) hair, an angel stuck out if he spent every daylight hour for a week in the Gardens. He'd attracted the attention of a caretaker. Then another. Then their supervisor, who had been curious about how a random woman with apparently nowhere else to spend her day knew so much about the care and cultivation of a garden.

Amata had quickly gained a title and a family in a far away land who could not be reached for immediate comment. Also some servants who she'd sent away on errands, and fine enough accessories to make her background clear.

Crawly had been introduced to two more tiers in the Gardens, and then to Semiramis, who'd been taking a walk in the aquatics level at the same time he'd been receiving a tour.

"We'll discuss possibly importing some of your favorites at dinner," Semiramis said.

Crawly immediately started thinking of ways to make sure that didn't happen because he had no idea where he could procure an interesting fruit branch to add to the Gardens' collection. He smiled broadly. "Looking forward to it."

"I want to introduce you to someone. We'll have to climb one more set of stairs I'm afraid, but the apothecary garden is too dangerous to keep anywhere else."

"You have a level just for medicinal plants?"

"You look ready to pounce, Amata." Semiramis lightly pressed her thumb against the pulse point in Crawly's wrist. "Is there anything that interests you half as much as flowers and trees?"

"Half as much as trees and flowers leaves a lot to be interested in," Crawly assured her.

Semiramis gave him a small, curious smile, and nudged him up the stairs to the next level.

***

Aziraphale wore a dark gray shawl belted over black trousers, and when Semiramis introduced them he leaned into kiss Crawly's cheek but didn't actually touch his lips to Crawly's skin.

"A pleasure to meet you, Lady Amata," he said, very nearly into Crawly's ear.

Crawly poured all his effort into holding still and not crushing Semiramis's arm in his grip. This corner of the apothecary garden was enclosed in brick, with thick glass windows letting in light every couple of feet. The scent of pink tamarisk hung heavy in the air. With Aziraphale this close, he could also taste clove when he inhaled.

He cast his eyes down and summoned up, from somewhere, "It's an honor to make your acquaintance, Aziraphale."

Part of him wanted to ask whether Aziraphale was worried about giving out his real name. But he'd never asked, in the first Garden, whether Aziraphale actually _had_ a demonic name. Maybe he did, and he'd been giving out his old one all along.

Anyway. Crawly should not be worried about whether a demon was going to get himself summoned. Semiramis was nothing like Nimrod either.

"Aziraphale specializes in potentially hazardous medicinal specimens," Semiramis said.

"Be careful not to touch or inhale, my dear," Aziraphale said. His black eyes sparkled when Crawly tried to glare at him without losing the bland smile on his face. "Some of these are toxic unless handled by an expert."

Lady Amata couldn't plausibly act like she didn't know she'd been brought to a poison hothouse, but would also be expected to be discreet enough not to say it out loud. So Crawly simply nodded in return. He pretended not to notice the hemlock growing in the bed over from the tamarisk, or the purple belladonna flowers tucked in behind a riot of daisies in every hue Crawly had ever seen a daisy produce. He let Semiramis keep him tucked up against her side and did not bend down to smell the bright red poppy flowers.

Crawly was also trying to gracefully ignore that the planters had snakes carved into their stone sides.

Except, of course, that Aziraphale noticed him trying not to notice, and said with innocent interest, "Are you not familiar with the symbol of the Serpent, Lady Amata?"

"They're charming animals," he decided to say. Inducing a heart attack in a demon who hadn't actually done anything yet was both rude and probably beyond Crawly's powers, not that he had ever wanted to try before. He plastered on a tight smile. He had a twisted bronze clasp holding his braids in place, decorated in faint scales. Aziraphale couldn't have not noticed.

"The doctors here embrace the design as a motif of regeneration," Aziraphale told him.

"I'm sure you saw our citizens with serpent medallions and charms," Semiramis added. "There is an ancient local tradition of serpents as guardians. Remind me to show you the carvings on the entrances to the throne room and my chambers, Lady Amata."

Aziraphale had what Crawly had to assume was a smug expression on his face.

"These are mine," he said, gesturing to a wide, round pot full of pale pink oleander. "I brought them on my last trip."

"We keep this place enclosed to prevent the bees from using it for pollination," Semiramis explained.

"People have died from eating honey produced in oleander fields," Aziraphale added, casually. "I read about it once."

"How terrible."

"In small amounts the flowers are used for decoration," Semiramis said. She touched Crawly's wrist again. "Let's sit. I have some business to take care of before we move on, Amata, if you don't mind."

Crawly shot a sideways glare at Aziraphale while her attention was on him, too. "Of course not," he said.

At the end of the hothouse was a small door leading into a sitting area underneath a white tent. The air inside was significantly cooler than in the hothouse. There was a low wooden chair for Semiramis to recline in, and a stool at her side that Crawly folded himself onto.

Two of the guards stayed at the tent entrance. One at Semiramis's shoulder, and the other in the corner, watching Aziraphale carefully remove the lid from a wooden box and bring out cuttings tucked into small clay pots.

"What have you brought me this time?"

"Castor beans, your majesty. With numbers, you can use them to make the most wonderful oil. Be very careful with the seeds, they're not for consumption," Aziraphale murmured, the master of understatement. A single seed could kill a child, and a handful of them an adult. The oil was what you got if you worked at it. The poison ricin came naturally. "Once you have a crop you'll need to cold press it and…"

Crawly clasped his hands together in his lap. He wanted to tune this out, but couldn't. If Aziraphale left anything out, anything at all, he'd have to jump in. Explaining that Lady Amata had the experience necessary to know that ricin extract could kill a grown man through inhalation alone would be difficult. Nimrod was regrettably not the only human Crawly had failed to influence towards Good. Whenever Gabriel complained about his numbers, he wanted to bite back, _Have you tried?_

There was so much, on Earth. So much to choose from. That was the whole point, wasn't it?

Semiramis extended a hand and Aziraphale deposited one of the small clay pots into her palm. She turned it, examining the tiny castor sprout. Red stems led to broad green leaves. Later, there would be tufts of spiky red seed pods.

"An excellent offering," she finally said. She placed the pot back onto the table. "Speak to Utuaa on your way out."

"I appreciate your patronage, your majesty," Aziraphale murmured. He boxed his cuttings back up and one of the guards took him outside.

The next time Crawly saw him was at dinner, but he was at the other end of the table. Semiramis kept touching Crawly's wrist and calling his attention to the small dishes being served for the meal, and to his cup being refilled with wine. There wasn't much Crawly could do to keep an eye on the demon from his seat. He just had to hope that nothing Aziraphale sold had made it into anyone's cups.

***

At three in the morning, well before sunrise, Crawly woke up and could not go back to sleep.

Twenty fruitless minutes of trying, and he was silently slithering out of bed. He found a fringed shawl - not his, but good enough for the purpose - and wrapped it around himself. He didn't bother to belt it into place. The balcony was only a few steps away.

From here Crawly could see the sprawl of Babylon before the palace, small and dark with sleep. In the far distance sat the quiet presence of the Gardens. The windmill at the base turned lazily in a weak night breeze. Water spun starlight back up into the sky from the irrigation canals.

He put both his elbows down on the balcony railing and allowed himself a small smile.

A moment later, the air shifted.

"Is Semiramis as delightful in bed as she is at dinner conversation?" Aziraphale asked.

Crawly looked up at the Heavens and the pale ribbon of the galaxy, gauzy against a backdrop of pinprick stars. He prayed for patience before turning to glare at the demon. It did not feel like a prayer anyone actually heard (Crawly could mostly tell the difference), but he thought it was worth a try.

Next to him, Aziraphale had his back against the balcony rail and one arm folded along it. When Crawly turned to look, Aziraphale rested his chin in his hand and smiled. He still had on the formal black clothes he'd been wearing at dinner, so in the dark only his hair, face, and the hollow of his throat were really visible.

"You make a lot of assumptions," Crawly muttered.

The night air wound cool around his bare legs. He wished his shawl draped further than midway down his thighs. Or that he had taken half a moment to pull his tangled, messy hair into a knot, instead of letting it hang loose on his shoulders.

"That's not your shawl, my dear," Aziraphale said, slowly running his eyes up and down Crawly's frame.

"It would have been rude to reject her hospitality," he said, carefully, and clenched his teeth when Aziraphale laughed. "Well, my alternative for company was you, wasn't it?"

Both of Aziraphale's eyebrows shot up. "Was it?"

Under the weight of his wide-eyed black stare, Crawly realized how that had sounded. His ears grew hot. He wondered if he could change into serpent form here and hiss without waking Semiramis, but even if he managed it, Aziraphale would probably just laugh and pat his head. It was unfair that demons and archangels had a monopoly on being frightening. He should've asked Michael for advice, the last time he was in Babylon.

Oh, surprise! That still produced a twinge of unhappiness. He shoved it aside. "Did you come here just to annoy me?"

"Yes!" Aziraphale grinned.

"Mission accomplished. You can go now."

"You're no fun."

"I'm an angel, I'm not supposed to be fun," said Crawly, the queen of witty comebacks.

Aziraphale leaned forward. "I think Semiramis would disagree."

"Were you _listening?"_ Crawly's ears burned hotter. As strange as it felt to say, here, in this city, he did like the lilt of the language, the sound of it on Semiramis's tongue. He had liked listening to it. He'd also assumed he'd been the only one listening.

"Don't look so scandalized, of course not. I've been busy. Semiramis isn't the only human I'm talking to here. And unlike you, I stayed long enough for dessert," Aziraphale said.

It was a near thing but Crawly did manage not to open his mouth and protest that he had eaten dessert. It had just been delivered to Semiramis's quarters ahead of their arrival. Fresh whipped cream and sliced apricots. Semiramis had made him try two different bowls, and. And telling Aziraphale that would be a bad idea.

In a dimensional plane slightly behind them, Crawly tucked his wings in, tight against his sides. He lifted his chin so his hair fell to one shoulder and tried to summon even a tenth of Michael's hard glare.

"Oh, was it not good?" Aziraphale asked. "What a pity."

Crawly bit the inside of his cheek. "What do you want?"

"Hmm. Bored." He lifted his head from his hand and lowered his arm, walking two fingers along the balcony rail, over to Crawly's elbow. "Thinking of sneaking into the Gardens for a walk. It'd be a shame if somebody stopped me from doing anything nefarious."

_"Nefarious,_ dove?"

"You're still on that," Aziraphale muttered.

Crawly would have thrown up his hands, but his shawl would've fallen open. "My dear?" he asked.

"I call everyone that. It's polite."

"You're a demon, what do you care from polite?"

"Crawly, dearest," Aziraphale said, the corner of his mouth turning up when Crawly's eye twitched, "you can get away with nearly anything if you're polite first. Like giving a charming noblewoman separated from her retinue a private tour of your very impressive Gardens and then casually inviting her to bed."

"And delivering extremely deadly plants even though you know nothing about growing them?"

"I don't know nothing, I know enough," Aziraphale countered. "And it's the humans who decide how to use them. I just provide the opportunity."

"The Temptation."

"Listen to you and your capital letters. I am a demon. Did you expect something else?"

Crawly squirmed, and turned back to look out at the landscape in an attempt to mask it. "No."

Aziraphale leaned over. "Do you want to go to the Gardens with me, or do you want to go back to bed?"

He hoped it was dark enough that the deep, full-body flush that overtook him at Aziraphale's tone wasn't obvious. Bodies were nothing but traitors. Maybe that was why angels like Nithael preferred to spend as little time on Earth as possible. Give your corporation too much time on the physical plane and it started to get ideas of its own. Like blushes.

"Crawly," Aziraphale murmured, sing-song. "Who knows what I could get up to on my own. Blight some berries. Introduce root rot."

Silently, Crawly kept his eyes on the sleeping city. He was not going to engage. He wasn't.

"Break the irrigation system…"

Crawly turned on his heel and opened his mouth.

Aziraphale was grinning again. "So that's a yes?"

***

"I am _only_ here because you're impossible."

"Whatever you need to put in your report, Crawly."

He had said yes. And then he'd made Aziraphale wait on the balcony for him to slide back into the bedroom, collect (his own) clothing and dress himself properly. He also decided Aziraphale could wait for him to brush some of the knots out of his hair and twist it up against his neck. Although it had been a slight relief that the demon hadn't taken off by the time Crawly got back outside.

Now they walked in the orchard Semiramis had shown him earlier. Crawly kept darting glances to the irrigation canal and to Aziraphale's hands, which, every time he looked, were obligingly clasped together behind Aziraphale's back.

They'd flown here and Aziraphale had not folded his wings away. Crawly felt awkward not doing the same, so he'd left his out too.

"I never got around to asking," Aziraphale said, "is there a bird modeled on your wings?"

Crawly hesitated. There were no swans in Semiramis's Gardens. There were kingfishers - Crawly had seen them, on the lower levels, and wondered vaguely how Nithael was getting on.

Nithael, who had checked on him twice more before Michael declared his Tower report finished, and cornered him along with Hahasiah. Who had _also,_ somehow, remembered him. Crawly wondered if memorability was punishment for something he had done. Or considered doing. Or caused to happen, by coincidence. Principalities remembered him. Humans in Noah's grandson's city remembered him (or the shape of him, anyway).

Demons…

"It was just a question."

Crawly realized he'd been staring into space. He jerked his head down and brushed at his face like some loose hair had fallen into it, which it hadn't. "Ah - birds," he said. There were lots of birds with black wings, and even birds with black wings sporting red columns on the undersides, but… "No."

He'd met them all, in Eden. And again on the Ark.

Aziraphale shrugged. "Suppose that makes sense. Couldn't be a bird and a serpent."

"Do you think the birds are really modeled on u- modeled on angels and demons?"

"Do you think we're modeled on them?"

He did not like the feeling in his chest right now. Traitor bodies, again. It had been over three thousand years and the idea that thought could _be_ physical still … felt wrong. For lack of a better word.

"Oh you've got that look on your face again. They're just questions."

"Questions about the Great Plan aren't questions we're meant to ask, Aziraphale. Our design isn't… It's not something we need to know about."

Aziraphale rolled his eyes and drifted off the footpath over to a tree.

Off the path there was no light at all. Because the Gardens were closed at night, unless Semiramis needed them, none of the lamps were lit. Crawly had little issue seeing in the dark and suspected that Aziraphale didn't either. But following a demon - this demon, especially - into the depths of a garden in the middle of the night was beyond him.

Crawly snapped his fingers and a soft glow suffused the canopy above them.

While he walked in, crushing clover under his feet, Aziraphale lifted his head toward the light. It filtered through the leaves and made his pale hair take on a tinge of green.

"Does that mean you're scared of questions?" he asked, eyeing the glow. He looked down. His eyes were black through. "Or me?"

"I'm not afraid of you."

Aziraphale cocked his head. "Your pupils are all wide, Crawly."

"Maybe," Crawly said, trying not to grind his teeth, "it's just what serpents do, before they strike."

"Every time we meet you threaten me," Aziraphale said, chiding. The corner of his mouth turned up in half a smile.

"We've only met three times. You can't say 'every time,' three times doesn't count."

Stretching his wings out a bit, so they caught the pale green light and were not in his way, Aziraphale settled his back against a tree trunk. His folded black shawl cut stark across his chest now that they were out of the shadows. "It's the fourth time, Crawly, we met twice at the Ark. And I don't see why not. It's more times than I've met any other angel here. Certainly none of your colleagues have ever deigned to speak with me."

"Were you polite?"

"Unfailingly." And now he was grinning. It outshone the ethereal glow in the trees.

Shutting the light off would look like defeat. Crawly was hardly beat, so he didn't. He did walk over to a tree across from Aziraphale's, fold his wings in, and lean against it so the bark was at his back. "Where are you meeting angels?"

"Here and there. Don't you run into your coworkers?"

No. No, actually, he didn't. Unless they sought him out specifically to witness exercises of divine wrath. "When I need to speak with my coworkers, I visit Head Office."

"Well, when I need to speak to my coworkers I just seek out the nearest dank and depressing watering hole and wait." Aziraphale flicked his hand dismissively as if it would make Crawly not notice the thread of disdain that resonated from that declaration.

To avoid analyzing the fact that he'd noticed that, Crawly said, "I met a demon in a bar once."

Aziraphale raised both eyebrows at him. "What's the punchline for that?"

For a moment Crawly considered the truth, which was that they'd both been minding their own respectively blessed and damned business, until he'd slipped and elbowed the creature in the face. The demon had hit his head on the corner of his chair on his way down and discorporated, which had been a lot of fun to try to hush up in a bar full of humans. Too many memory-wiping miracles almost always got you - or Crawly, at least - noticed Upstairs.

Gabriel had chided him for being sloppy but also complimented him for dispatching a demon. Crawly had just been relieved that it hadn't been any of the Principalities sent to check on him. Or Michael.

So, not the truth. "Dank and depressing bars do not seem like your kind of place," he said instead.

"No, I much prefer palaces."

"I can tell," Crawly said. He shifted his wings. The divine light he'd called up glinted bright on his black feathers and blended against the surface of the red ones. 

Aziraphale's eyes tracked where the ends of his wings trailed in the grass. "I hardly think you're in a position to criticize me for enjoying the wonders of Babylon. I can tell your interests lie … elsewhere," he said, meaningfully, tempting (but not Tempting) Crawly to make a gesture that had been rude in Babylon two thousand years ago even if it had been forgotten now, "but the food is actually impressive."

"The food?"

"Cooking has improved significantly since the last time we crossed paths, surely even you've noticed. And the palace does have-" Here Aziraphale paused, and his expression grew briefly thoughtful before being swept off in a shallow smile. "The palace has very good food."

"Not the best, though," Crawly guessed.

"Depends on what you want to eat."

"Where else would you go for dinner?" Crawly asked, slowly, not entirely sure what he wanted the answer to be.

It was definitely not what Aziraphale said, which started with a tiny smirk at what Crawly was sure was his expense. "Looking for leads on the local demon hangouts, are we?"

What he should say was _yes._ Bluster a little. His impression of Michael's glare had failed, but maybe he could carry off Gabriel's sneer. Crawly thought about it for half a second.

But no. Crawly was in Babylon to see the Gardens and to spend away his time until Heaven sent him another assignment. Seeking out dank, depressing, demonic watering holes was something angels with an unhealthy interest in discorporation did. Or at least angels on Crawly's level of power. Who knew what Gabriel and Sandalphon did when not destroying cities together.

"I don't usually have to go looking for demons. They seem to find me all on their own," he finally said.

Smiling, Aziraphale laced his fingers together. "I didn't go looking, Crawly, I wasn't expecting to see you at all. It was quite the surprise. None of the angels I've met would've fallen in with her majesty."

Crawly tilted his face up. He hoped he looked slightly less dismantled than he had when he'd caught a glimpse of himself in Semiramis's quarters, reflected in a bowl of water. "I did nothing wrong, I didn't influence her. She asked me. Heaven doesn't concern itself with trivial things."

"Nephilim."

"There's no danger of me or the queen producing one of those, I'm not stupid," Crawly muttered, slouching.

Aziraphale laughed softly. When Crawly glared at him, he spread his hands. "What? I can't be to blame for you being amusing," he said. "Laughing isn't a call to bristle like that. I haven't done anything terrible."

"You sold poison to Semiramis."

With deliberate slowness, Aziraphale raised a hand. The branch above his head shook slightly. It sent a quiet rustle through the rest of the tree while a bright red apple fell into his palm. He held it up so green light bounced off the skin. "Apple seeds are poisonous."

Crawly gave him a flat look. "People don't eat cups of ground apple seeds at a time."

"And people do make oil from castor seeds. If you think Semiramis is likely to poison her enemies with my plants, then maybe you should be careful about who you fall into bed with, my dear."

"I am, dove," Crawly said, pointedly.

Tucking the apple into a small purse on his belt, Aziraphale started walking toward him. Crawly held still and pushed away the reflex to breathe. In the soft light Aziraphale's curls seemed thoughtlessly messy instead of styled, his black clothing like a piece of the night sky he'd wrapped around himself, his trailing wings like condensed starlight.

Part of Crawly was aware that his pupils must have swallowed up most of his eyes, to be seeing things in such detail. That didn't explain the poetry of it, but before he could think too much about that Aziraphale was in front of him and there was nothing left to think about.

"Still so suspicious, for an angel," Aziraphale said.

Then he banked sharply and walked back to the footpath. He had nearly gotten out of earshot when he looked over his shoulder and called, "Are you done guarding this place against me, then?"

When Crawly had turned the light off - it would hardly do for the humans to find it, in the morning - and gotten far enough down the path to find Aziraphale again, he found the demon had put his wings away and settled himself into a curved wooden chair. There was one next to it. This must be a rest station for the cultivators, since this level wasn't open to the public.

Crawly did not sit in the other chair. He stood, and unfolded his wings to let the night air shift through them. "I don't know what you expected out of an angel if not suspicion."

"The last angel I met went on a lot about Heaven."

"There's a lot to be said about Heaven." Somebody out there could say a lot, anyway, Crawly was sure.

"I think I've heard most of it. Come on, Crawly, aren't you bored with this?"

The question came in the same conversational tone that everything Aziraphale said to him came in, but it made the ground beneath Crawly's feet feel unsteady. He wanted to pull his wings in further and concentrated on holding them still. On looking collected, and not thrown off.

"I am not bored of Heaven, if that's what you're asking," he said. "You know, Michael herself called me back."

He did not mention that it had been over two thousand years ago.

Aziraphale stopped moving. Crawly hadn't realized that he'd realized, but Aziraphale's hands usually moved, even when he wasn't speaking. Or he looked around, or shifted his weight, or… But now, at Michael's name, or maybe at the tone of Crawly's voice (Crawly hoped), he went still.

"Ah," he finally said.

"And Heaven invited me to stay." Or Nithael did, anyway. Same difference.

Something about that made Aziraphale crack, which was not the effect that Crawly had been aiming for. He blinked and made a show of sitting up and looking around them. Crawly tried and failed not to roll his eyes. When the demon finished examining their very Earthly surroundings he leaned back against his chair. "What made you reject such a generous offer?"

Crawly opened his mouth to answer and faltered.

_Consider it,_ Nithael had said.

For a long, silent minute, Aziraphale watched him.

"I like Earth," he finally said, softly. Not mumbling. Just quiet. "I like them."

He expected a smart comment about Semiramis, but it didn't come. Instead Aziraphale crossed one leg over the other. "You do, don't you."

It wasn't a question. Crawly swallowed. He hesitated, then made a small gesture at the Gardens behind them. "Doesn't this place remind you?"

"Of what?"

"You were there too," Crawly said. It was true. He could feel it. Aziraphale had been there, and Aziraphale was here now, not down in Hell like some backwards version of the Principalities. Crawly had felt this since he'd seen Babylon glittering in the distance. Surely even a demon… "Doesn't it remind you? They remember, don't you think? They're trying to rebuild it."

"Are you talking about Eden?" Aziraphale asked, baffled. "You think the humans remember it. What, they're chasing perfection?"

"No, not that." Crawly flicked his wings, unhappy. It felt like he was sinking into the grass-and-clover ground underneath his feet. "They build things, Aziraphale. This place is beautiful and they built it with nothing more than their hands. We have more than that. When did we ever build things?"

Brittleness crept into Aziraphale's expression. He looked down at his hands. They were back in the dark together, so his clothing was so much shadow and his hands nearly glowed. "You may still be entertained, but I am very bored with talk about the Heaven-that-was before the Fall, Crawly. Have been for quite some time."

"Why are you here?"

Aziraphale ticked the benefits of Babylon off on his fingers. "Selling useful plants to royalty for a truly absurd profit, please don't tell Semiramis. Eating delicious food. Taking advantage of the luxurious accommodations afforded a wealthy trader from foreign parts."

"No, I mean-" Crawly exhaled and folded himself down on the grass, his legs tucked underneath him, wings tilted to rest on the grass. It felt like too much, to take the seat next to Aziraphale. But the ground was familiar and welcomed him down with a gentle softness. It also felt steadier, once he was seated, than it had when he'd been standing. "Why are you _here?_ You sold your things. You accomplished your Temptation. Couldn't you be in Hell?"

Aziraphale raised an eyebrow. "The company of most demons leaves something to be desired, my dear."

"Yeah?" Crawly asked, letting that _dear_ pass without comment. He watched an insect crawl up onto a blade of grass at his knee. "What's the 'something'?"

"What?"

Crawly let his wings vanish, so he matched Aziraphale. "What's the 'something'? The thing Earth has that Hell doesn't?"

Aziraphale stared at him for a long minute. "You actually want to know," he said, and it wasn't a question.

"Something's keeping you here," Crawly insisted. He put his hands down in the grass, behind him, so he could lean his weight on his arms. His fingers dug into cool earth. "And it's not selling toxic plants. You don't care about plants that much."

"Crawly," Aziraphale said, gently. "If I cared about my work it would not be about the plants, no."

"So you're not here because you care about work," Crawly said, grabbing onto that thread. He could have scoffed and brushed Aziraphale off, but he felt like if he did that the conversation would end. And he found that he... didn't want it to. "I'm sure you could talk your way into most palaces."

Surprise flashed onto Aziraphale's face. "Flatterer!"

Crawly ignored him. "So why this one?"

Drumming his fingers against the arm of the chair, Aziraphale leaned back against the chair and then forward again. "You came here because of the Gardens, yes? Not for her majesty?"

"Yes," Crawly said, annoyed. "I only met Semiramis today, I-"

"Oh, don't you move quickly."

"Dove."

Aziraphale waved him off. Figuring out how exactly how to wield that name was going to take some doing, but if it still worked… (It did not occur to Crawly until much later, but this thought rested on an assumption that he would be talking to Aziraphale again. Under some other night sky, maybe.)

"Well, I did come here for Semiramis," Aziraphale said. At the look on Crawly's face he made another dismissive gesture. "Not like that, please, she's hardly my type."

The word "Who?" escaped Crawly's traitorous mouth.

If Aziraphale heard it he chose not to acknowledge it, though, and even Crawly's tongue apparently couldn't handle asking that question a second time. Which was great, because Crawly had no idea what he'd been asking.

"Semiramis may only be reigning Babylon until it suits her purposes to have her son on the throne instead," Aziraphale said, "but she is using her influence to construct an impressive empire. I see why you would like her exterior work but I've been using my palace access for something else."

Crawly was busy trying to figure out if 'exterior work' was an attempt to call him shallow, so he didn't interrupt.

"The Akkadian language is beautiful, really. Amazing what humanity will come up with under pressure," Aziraphale observed. Another twinge of unhappiness from inside Crawly's chest, but he must have kept it off his face, because Aziraphale didn't ask. "Semiramis has an entire suite of rooms for the display of interesting tablets, it's a sight to behold."

"You came here to read?"

The clear membranes over Aziraphale's eyes shuttered closed. Fast, so fast that Crawly would have missed it if his own eyes weren't still dilated. "I," the demon said, shoulders stiffening, "have facilitated more illnesses and assassinations than anyone in this region. I came here to promote discord and I have done well at it."

"I'm not auditing your work, I'm just surprised," Crawly said, rolling his eyes.

His arms were starting to get tired, sitting in the dirt behind him. He settled backward and put his elbows down to prop himself up. He unfolded his legs and crossed his ankles. Aziraphale watched him with some measure of unease until Crawly was starting to think that maybe he had ruined the conversation after all.

"Dove," he said, tentative. Apparently that would make Aziraphale's head cock to the side. "What have you been reading?"

Aziraphale looked down at his hand, touched one of his fingers. For the first time Crawly noticed he had a small brass ring on. From here it looked like a curved swan's wing. "Semiramis has thirty-four tablets of the Enuma Anu Enlil."

Crawly waited, and Aziraphale watched him. Eventually not reacting was awkward, so Crawly said, "Ah."

"You have no bloody idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

"No. Sorry."

Aziraphale slumped in his chair. "No, no, shouldn't have expected otherwise."

"You could… tell me about it."

"It's nothing." Aziraphale let his head rest on the back of the chair, so his face was tilted up at the sky. "Just thousands upon thousands of meticulously plotted out astronomical observations. They're actually right about the lunar and solar eclipses. I did the math to check. Semiramis even managed to obtain two of the star tablets, not that I've managed to get her to tell me how. Or let me look at them, yet."

Crawly glanced up at the sky. At the tiny pinpricks of stars, the haze of the galaxy. So opaque to human eyes and things he had touched, once, with extensions of himself approximating fingers.

"They're not done," he said, quietly.

"There's supposed to be a whole swathe of writing on the movement of the planets, but I haven't found anyone who's been able to confirm that. I should've been paying more attention when the things were being written, but I was busy. So far I've half the tablets memorized, it really does take a while to commit cuneiform to memory." And there Aziraphale stopped and raised his head. "Beg pardon. What was that?"

"The stars," Crawly murmured. "They're not done. There's still some forming, out in nebulae."

Aziraphale stared. "Are there?"

"I worked on them. Star nurseries. It's not like this, not… It's cold, and there's no air, and it doesn't react to you being there," Crawly said. "You don't get life in a star nursery."

That was all back when Heaven was Heaven-that-was, as Aziraphale had put it.

Abruptly he realized the strange expression on Aziraphale's face might actually be boredom. He dipped his head and uncrossed his ankles. "Didn't mean to interrupt. You - You like astronomy?"

"It's not that," Aziraphale said, after a moment. "They've pinned all these fascinating predictions to everything. If the full moon is on the third day of the month, then the crops will prosper, when the sun goes dark at this time, the kingdom will doubt the sovereign's speech."

"What, really?"

"It might be utter nonsense, but I thought, well, I'll be around for it. Might as well read up and see what happens, it would be interesting even if I'll never get to tell anybody whether they were wrong." Aziraphale put one elbow down on the arm of his chair and rested his cheek against his hand. "Is that a sufficient answer, Crawly?"

The clear-winged insect at Crawly's knee hopped off the grass and onto his clothing. He watched it step across his leg. "You like … predictions."

"I like humans writing their own futures, instead of simply taking the ones they've been given," Aziraphale said. He paused, and the corner of his mouth went up, as if he had not just said something that made a knot wedge in Crawly's chest. Like the cold of space surrounding a nebula, which didn't care if an angel was there. Aziraphale added, oblivious to what he'd just done, "Also, it's entertaining. They write funny things, too, but copies of those stories are easier to find."

Crawly held very still until the insect picked itself up and disappeared into the darkness. Which was rapidly becoming less dark - the horizon, when Crawly glanced at it, was tinged with threads of gold and orange.

"Mornings do creep up," Aziraphale murmured.

"I should go," Crawly said. Because Aziraphale was a demon. And Crawly was an angel. Because the sun was coming up. For a lot of reasons, including, "Semiramis is going to wake and miss me, which would make my life really complicated."

"Can't have that."

"Aziraphale," Crawly said. He did not say, _please._

Aziraphale pushed himself to his feet, took a few steps forward from the chair. Just enough room to let his wings back out. He rolled his shoulders like he needed the stretch. "Farewell until next time, my dear fellow."

"Do your tablets say there'll be a next time?"

"They're not my tablets," Aziraphale said. His voice suggested that he was displeased with this state of affairs. "And no, they do not. That's up to you, Crawly. Does Heaven's kind offer still stand?"

Crawly pressed his lips together.

There was only a weak wind, nothing that would actually help, but Aziraphale let his wings drift back as if caught in it anyway. Then he flexed them and was gone. A tiny point in the sky, quickly swallowed up by the rest of the black.

Crawly stood in the Gardens until he was absolutely sure the demon wasn't about to double back, and then he flew himself back to Semiramis's quarters. The other half of her palatial bed was cool to the touch when he slunk back into it. He coiled himself up as much as this body would allow and shut his eyes.

Sleep didn't come, but at full dawn, Semiramis moved her hand across his brow. "You look like you had a restless night, Amata."

He turned his head to kiss the curve of her palm. Her skin was warm against his lips. "I'm alright."

"Time for breakfast," she murmured, dipping her head to press a long kiss to his mouth in return.

When she pulled away, he gave her a small smile. "In the Gardens?"

She laughed. Her smile lit up her face, but it didn't glow.

Crawly wished for a lot of things. Not having that thought was one of them.


End file.
